The hapless Houston Chronicle editorial board

Houston's alt left daily prints a tantrum about the tax cut after Republicans keep their promise.

There isn’t much to say about the left leaning Houston Chronicle editorial board that hasn’t been said already. The rants that they produce are often without merit, rarely with substance and mostly rehashes of thoughts found elsewhere in the alt left media world. As such, I mostly overlook them and rarely bother to comment on them.

First off, if anyone thinks that the politicians that passed this bill did it without regard to fallout they have no business commenting about politics. Of course, that isn’t what the elitist thinkers writing editorials for the Chron actually mean. What they mean is that the politicians that voted to put more money into the wallets of 80% or more of Americans didn’t think about what the fallout from liberal, elitist thinking editorial boards would be! And you know what? They are correct! Who the hell cares what these negative, whiny little elitists think?

Gotta love the start of the screed though. Grab your wallet. Open it up. And put the extra money that you used to pay to the government in. Then spend it as you see fit. You want to know what fallout the politicians that voted for the tax cuts were looking at? That fallout. The sound of dollar bills whooshing as consumers go about the business of consuming and the economy marches on.

Incredibly, further down in the screed, the ed board expands on that ‘saddling our kids with more debt’ with talk of ‘rosy Enron math’. Nothing says Chron ed board more than an Enron reference apropos of nothing. The truth is that growth will occur, even if we can’t predict precisely how much. The truth is that the tax cuts aren’t saddling our kids with anything. The truth is that SPENDING is saddling our kids and grandkids and great grandkids with debt. And the ed board sat by with its collective thumbs up its ass while Barack Obama doubled the nations debt in 8 years. Get outta here with that crap.

Above all else in that screed, this paragraph stands out for its outlandish foolishness:

Nonetheless, GOP lawmakers are racing to pass this bill without regard to its details or its political consequences. Maybe they should remember what happened after Democrats leveraged their control of the White House and Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2009. During the next four years, Republicans fanning flames of opposition to Obamacare defeated enough Democrats to take control of both the House and the Senate.

So let’s think about that for a second. Hmm. Okay, second’s up. What did you figure out?

Yeah. These guys actually think that people are going to be taking to the streets and disrupting political events because…wait for it…they have more money in their pockets.

Absolutely absurd. But then, we are talking about the Houston Chronicle editorial board. By the way, those protests about the effects of Obamacare on healthcare? If only those politicians had listened, perhaps people could actually afford healthcare today.

If you want a more reasonable editorial on the tax cuts, perhaps read this one:

The Tax Reform PromiseThe GOP delivers against long odds and Beltway opposition.

The tax reform that will pass Congress Wednesday fulfills a major Republican campaign promise, but more important is that it marks a return to the politics of growth after many lean years of envy and income redistribution. It offers hope of broader prosperity after a decade of slow growth and rising inequality.

On the merits, the bill is the most pro-growth tax policy since the Reagan reforms of 1981 and 1986. We should add that it is not as good for individual taxpayers as those two acts. The bill cuts marginal tax rates only a little for individuals, and that will temper its growth impact. The politics of envy that has dominated American politics since the mid-2000s has also infected many Republicans, especially its Beltway intellectual class.

This reform will rise or fall on its business tax changes, and those are arguably superior to the 1986 act. The corporate rate cut to 21% from 35% solves a core problem of U.S. economic and business competitiveness. Along with 100% expensing, the rate cut slashes the cost of capital enough to cause CEOs to think again about America as a place to invest. Sweeping away many (alas, not all) special tax breaks means fewer incentives to misallocate capital.

The Germans Are ImpressedEurope knows the GOP tax reform makes the U.S. more competitive.

German economists at the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) released a study last week finding that U.S. corporate tax reform will sharply improve incentives for foreigners to invest in America—at the expense of high-tax countries such as Germany. The researchers note that before reform America’s statutory and effective corporate tax rates of 37.9% and 36.5% respectively, including state and local rates, were exceeded only by France in Europe. The average effective tax rate in the European Union is 20.9%.

…

Call it the Get Germany to Pay for American Jobs Act. Don’t be surprised if Germany, France and other high-tax countries follow the U.S. down the corporate Laffer Curve.

And if you don’t believe me that most of Americans will receive money in their pockets, click herefor an online tax cut calculator and find out for yourself how the bill will affect you. It’s so easy that a Chron ed board writer could use it. If they wanted to.

Updated: To truly understand reporters and editorial writers, you should follow their social media posts, particularly Twitter. You’d be amazed at how brazen they are in attacking Republicans and conservatives they are using the disclaimer ‘my own opinion and not that of my employer’ or some variation.

Houston Chronicle editorial board member and writer Evan Mintz tweeted this out a couple of hours after I posted the above:

I am surprised the Chronicle is still in business. You can get your news from other sources ( local news ) and not have to deal with their slant. Many years ago I applied for a job at the Chronicle ( late 90’s ) to work as a Cobol programmer. I was turned down. Internet opened up and now, no need for Cobol programmers. I know people who worked for them ( Chronicle ) and got laid off just before they were eligible for 10 years of service to get retirement benefits. Truman Meadows is the guys name. Now he lives on the street. He is a Vet just like me.

“Bill King makes the case that if we pin our hopes for a dramatic economic upturn from just cutting taxes, history suggests we will likely be disappointed and be passing on an even larger federal debt to our children and grandchildren.”https://bigjolly.com/will-tax-cuts-spur-economic-growth/

The Chronicle should focus on local issues, even if only from a business standpoint. I can read partisan screeching about national politics virtually anywhere I want. Why do I care at all about what the chronicle editors think about national issues? That being said, I can’t get local news anywhere. There are only a few sources for that. My business advice – drop the national coverage for the most part and focus on local.